


More Meta. NOT Fiction. Meandering. Did I Say Meta?

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Analysis, Gen, Meta, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I continue to prod fretfully at Series Three and Series Four, with deductive riffs, prolonged mutters, and meta considerations. This is more on the arcs and patterns I see coming out in what we've been given so far, covering quite a range of stuff.</p><p>Not tidy enough to be a full-fledged essay, though so help me it's long enough. If you enjoy me riffing on the show, by all means read. If not--please, run away? Really, I feel a bit odd throwing meta up in the first place, and I do not want to waste people's time if they're not interested in watching me do random walks through the material trying to figure things out. If you  find random meta analysis and spec fun, enter. If not? Here there definitely be monsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Meta. NOT Fiction. Meandering. Did I Say Meta?

 

Trailer for “His Last Vow,” foreshadowing, dramatic rhythm and contrast, and so on.

All right. We’ve had two lovely, lovely, lovey-dovey episodes of “Sherlock,” with Mycroft playing almost the sole “specter at the feast,” as Sherlock puts it in “The Sign of Three.” We’ve had it pounded into us that Sherlock loves and is loved; that for all his gawky dickish qualities, he’s found his surrogate family. They understand him more or less, they value him for who he is, they cherish him. On top of that, he’s now “vowed” his binding loyalty and protection to them.

Which in real life actually hints at happy endings and long, placid years of contentment. Needless to say, drama is not real life. As my ex—no great fan of fiction or television—was given to say as he walked past tv’s latest round of sobbing characters, “They’re all broken again.” Good drama breaks characters gloriously; bad drama breaks them tritely; but all drama breaks characters. Sherlock and his associates are due to be shattered. After two 90-minute Valentines to each other and to the audience, they’re due to be shattered to the heart.

Which, of course, brings us to “His Last Vow,” Charles Augustus Magnussen, and the trailer, in which Mycroft as good as tells Sherlock he can’t get to Magnussen without going through Big Brother first.  And then Magnussen declares Sherlock (like Moriarty before him) has made one critical, outstanding error that will “destroy the lives of everyone he loves, and everything he holds dear.”

Now, I have to say going in, I play “guess the upcoming arcs and themes” almost exactly the same way Sherlock and Mycroft play Deductions. You’ll note that they don’t do the sensible thing and wait till all the data is in, or go online to look it all up. No: the fun is in taking shots based on the too-little-you-know, and the evidence you hold in hand. And like Sherlock, if not Mycroft, I usually get critical bits wrong. Sometimes I get great big enormous whomping heaps of things wrong. Me, now, I don’t see this as anything worse than embarrassing, but far from enough to ruin the fun of the game. But you have to go in knowing that I’m not in this for predictive perfection, but for the fun of testing myself against dramatic logic, skilled writers who do not piss around with their audiences, and shows that respect the value of precision and exact detail. So do not read what follows expecting clear reveals that will all work out the way I say. Expect to see one damned self-indulgent woman who’s playing a solo game of Deductions, no more.

That said, let’s note some things:

Mycroft has proven to be one of Gatiss, Moffat and Steve Thompson’s most useful red herring characters: never quite what he seems, never doing quite what viewers expect. From his first fake-out appearance, when they lured people into the assumption he was Moriarty, he’s been a red cape the writers use to draw the viewer’s eye, lead them astray, set up the next illusion. Mycroft and his brother are in a complex relationship crammed to the eyebrows with secrets, with love and with anger, with alliance and competition…but ultimately, so far, with abiding loyalty.

Which makes this season to date simply fascinating, as on the one hand they’ve underlined that intense loyalty and connection, while simultaneously showing Mycroft more and more adrift from Sherlock’s warm-fuzzy love-fest with his new friends. The specter at the feast, as Sherlock says. The odd man out. They’ve outlined Mycroft as having conflicting reactions to Sherlock’s new life—on the one hand actually making efforts to leave him to it, and even warn him of upcoming pitfalls, on the other hand seeming almost to long for those pitfalls to come into play and Sherlock to be returned to him as his one intimate associate. By “The Sign of Three” Mycroft has been painted as hurt, isolated, lonely, and…it has to be said…abandoned by Sherlock in many ways.

[Editorial addition: I've been thinking about the sweetness and sadness of Sherlock's call to Mycroft during the reception. He's trying to pull Mycroft out into his world, bring big brother into the warm place with him. Mycroft absolutely and completely expects to be unwelcome--strongly unwelcome. Conversely Mycroft tries to pull Sherlock back in with him, ultimately falling into the sadness and nostalgia of trying to move Sherlock back to his childhood, when it was pirates and, perhaps, a simpler loving relationship: this makes twice Mycroft's gone clearly misty and wistful over pirate memories and Sherlock. It's looking increasingly like Sherlock's pirate era was Mycroft's Golden Age of having a brother who loved and needed him. But it's great writing, setting the stage for a battle to "save" Mycroft as John saved Sherlock. In some ways, done right, it's a battle that reflects, too, the battle Mycroft appears to have fought to save Sherlock from addiction. In terms of structure it could be a glorious thing, with shivery reflections of the two brothers each having to accept times of depenence, of being not-in-control, of owing debts of gratitude. From here it looks like Sherlock's first real chance to "repay" big brother for love, support, protection, and loyalty, and to repay as an adult not as a child. Mycroft, conversely, becomes the child: hurt at some point, in need, unable to rescue himself.  I am REALLY hoping this is an arc they're going to work carefully over the next series or so. It's got gold in every seam...]

Now, given their relationship, I’m not sure abandonment isn’t the right move for Sherlock as set up. Some relationships, no matter how complex and loving and intimate, are also ultimately destructive. I can’t think it’s an accident that just as Mycroft doesn’t show up for John’s wedding festivities, neither does John’s sister, Harry. One can become estranged from family, and sometimes that’s for very good reasons. Mycroft is, in his own odd way, clingy. He’s got one peer, whom he is used to dominating, bullying slightly, protecting passionately, and testing himself against to bolster an ego with some gaping holes in it. If he could, he’d have Sherlock working with him, away from the Real World, in the secret and isolated world of Mycroft’s fiefdom—an odd mix of secret service, diplomatic/foreign affairs and both domestic and international analysis. And that would not be good for Sherlock. It really would not. So Mycroft’s been set up as someone Sherlock loves, but has to be wary of, and who may turn out to be like John’s Harry: the lost connection. The person he has to let go. It has never seemed accidental to me that both Sherlock and John have difficult relationships with gay sibs they don't easily get along with: there are times the writers definitely use that as a structural device, and I think that's been used with intent in "Sign of Three." There really are problems between sibs, and sometimes the sibs can't get past them. [Another editorial addition: It seems no accident that John, Sherlock, and Mary are all without kin at the wedding. John and Sherlock are both stood up by their sibs, and Mary's an orphan. They are each other's families...]

But…

Ok. I look at that trailer for "His Last Vow," and I keep seeing that Mycroft’s not angry with Sherlock. He’s not threatening. He’s not the spitting-pissed he was when things went wrong with Irene Adler. He’s not calling Sherlock off of Magnussen, so near as I can tell: in the very tiny bit we see, there’s not that aura of “drop it, Sherlock” one would expect if Sherlock was heading in a direction Mycroft expected would destroy Baby Brother. Indeed, to me that tiny, infinitely short bit seems…like a man giving his brother the information he may need to survive, and maybe win. He’s giving Sherlock a clear look at the map of the battlefield and the placement of the various forces, and he’s not doing so with bravado or anger or challenge, but with something that, to me, reads almost as quiet resignation. The battle will come. Mycroft is going to have to fight on Magnussen’s side, for reasons we do not yet know. But he’s making sure little brother has one of the most critical bits of information in the game—because of all the people in all the world to know exactly what it means to have Mycroft in the game on the other side, it’s Sherlock.

Think about it. If Mycroft’s a) against Sherlock, b) wants Magnussen to win, then c) the best way of making sure of the victory against little brother is to keep little brother from knowing Mycroft will be his enemy. The perfect back-stab. Conversely, Mycroft knows that if anyone knows his methods, his systems, his weaknesses, it’s Sherlock…and while Sherlock may be “less smart” than Mycroft, he’s got years of play against big brother to help him learn how to compensate for that. Giving Sherlock the view of the battlefield, and doing it with such quiet resignation, suggests to me that Mycroft may not be able to throw the game—but that he’s rooting for the other side to find some damned way to win.

Which leads to the next set of observations. Magnussen places everything and everyone Sherlock loves into the sacrificial pyre. That would include Mycroft—as conflicted as they are, there’s simply no question left that Mycroft’s precious to Sherlock. Forcing the brothers to play opposing sides would, perhaps, to Magnussen meet the criteria of destroying something precious to Sherlock: cleaving their brothers-relationship to the very root. Pitting the two men against each other in a Civil War brother-versus-brother pit-match that can only end bitterly.

It can lead to the actual destruction of Mycroft. I can see some ways to have that outcome. Several of them are quite horrible… the more horrible in that, for all his conflicted, muddled, lonely, needy motives, Mycroft remains a good man who loves his brother dearly. Well, good for a certain “secret agent” value of good. Good in grey-scale, as it were. He’s on the side of the angels, even if he’s never quite one of them any more than Baby Brother is. Yet there are ways this upcoming set of arcs can mess Mycroft up professionally, personally, or even lead to his death.

Now, Moffat and Gatiss have just indicated they already have all of Series Four shaped out. Which, I have to say, seems entirely unsurprising. Series 3, to me, looks like a bridge series, connecting First Sherlock (Moriarty arc) with Second Sherlock (Magnussen arc), and dealing with the emotional transitions and shifts necessary to set up that incoming dramatic line while sorting out the aftermath of the Exile. Series 3 isn’t about Series 3, it’s about reconciling Series 1 & 2 with Series 4 and whatever follows. A bridge. A modulation. A shift in the key of the work. Most of all, though, a pause to array the characters in new constellations, and stress particular lines of connection and desire. So we can expect this last episode to be the launch-point: the moment when all that transition gets put into play. “Here, we’ve shown you who Sherlock is, now. What he’s becoming. We’ve shown you how precious his connections are—including that with Mycroft. We’ve shown you how isolated yet powerful Mycroft is. WE’ve shown you how intense the bonds on all sides are. Now—we are going to kick Sherlock and Mycroft and all the company in the slats so very hard you’re going to hear ribs break.”

I find myself wondering if Moffat and Gatiss have read Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna doesn’t want to fight because it’s a horrible, bloody, wasteful destruction of people he actually holds dear on both sides. There in the peace before the bloodshed Arjuna and Krishna argue about the entire issue of duty, doom, obligation, karma, transcendence of circumstance….and then Arjuna and Krishna go to war, not in hatred, but because the war’s unavoidable, and that being so, they have to play their parts or betray their ultimate place in the universe. This is what they have to do to be Arjuna and Krishna.

It looks to me like they’re laying out that kind of “We’re going to fight because we must” for Sherlock and Mycroft. They may end up on opposing sides—but it won’t be out of lack of love for each other. It won’t be out of personal spite or betrayal. If it leads to Mycroft’s destruction, it won’t be because Sherlock wants to destroy Mycroft…or vice versa.

To me the one spot of hope is that Mycroft doesn’t appear to have his heart in winning this fight. It looks, right now, like it may be a fight he has to enter into, and can’t throw, but which he may actually prefer to lose, if Sherlock can give him a way to lose that doesn’t destroy what Mycroft himself holds dearest…

Which, we must always remember, does include Sherlock. What we don’t know is what else Mycroft’s got in the balance. We’ve seen explicitly what Sherlock has to lose: we’ve had three hours of proof of what Sherlock has to lose, complete with sweet music and wedding waltzes and an incoming pregnancy and…. Yeah. We know what Sherlock’s got on the line. What we do not know is what Mycroft’s protecting, and why. Right now it looks like he’s got two, and only two major concerns: his nation, and his brother… and maybe a third, if we decide he’s vain and ambitious enough to value his career over his nation or his brother. But that would go against ACD canon (in which Mycroft was, in his own peculiar way, quite without ambition, beyond the ambition to serve) and it would go against “Sherlock” canon, in which national interest and baby brother are both higher in Mycroft’s heaven than his own standing: he was willing to sacrifice himself for both in “Scandal in Belgravia” in the end. We know that whatever is going on, Mycroft's going to side with Magnussen in the battle. What we do not yet know is what deep investments lead him to that choice. We don't know his motivating triggers, or how his various loyalties play out.

So…

We’re going to see the battle between Magnussen and Sherlock. Advance interviews suggest that not only will Sherlock not prove clearly victorious in this next outing, but that Magnussen brings Sherlock “to his knees.” Moffat’s said that, while not a cliffhanger in the same way as this last round, the end of the Series will leave the audience howling that they can’t leave it this way—which suggests they leave it a bloody mess with Sherlock finding out just how much he’s facing off against. One expects the brothers to be arrayed on opposing sides. Sherlock to be the David to Mycroft and Magnussen’s Goliath. Mycroft to be, perhaps, his usual wild-card self, never more on Sherlock’s side than when he appears to be opposed to Sherlock—and Mycroft is often the beloved element no one, including the viewers, remember to factor into Sherlock’s reckoning. One expects to see a set-up for further exploration of themes of connection and isolation next series: that, to me, looks like a *REALLY* good bet for next series, as they move forward with questions of both Sherlock and Mycroft’s social crippling.

And, I gotta say, while I think “His Last Vow” will prove a good episode, I think it will also be, ultimately, what bridge material always is: Just a tad unsatisfying. Bridges don’t resolve, they modulate. They ask new questions more than they answer old ones. They close doors and open new ones. But they just don’t have that satisfying completeness that less transitional material offers.

More guesses while I’m here. I think it’s too early to kill off Mary. We know that in ACD canon she will eventually die, and I do expect Moffat, Gatiss, and Thompson to kill her off, if only to save John for a lifetime of tagging along behind Sherlock…but I think not yet. She’s not yet precious enough to enough viewers, and she’s got too much plot potential for another series. I could be wrong. I can ALWAYS be wrong, and often outrageously wrong. But killing her this series feels off, unless they really want to clear the decks and put the motives in place for next series all at once. Seems wasteful, though: failure to make full use of the potential she offers.

I don’t know if I expect them to ever give Mycroft his Own Goldfish or not, or give him a bit of what Sherlock has. I am on the Mycroft cheering squad, so I hope so. But… it’s early days.

I’m curious where they are going with Molly, Tom, and Lestrade. They’re definitely playing games putting Lestrade next to Molly: that one’s clear as day, from his first attempt in “Hearse” to find out if she’s seriously involved with Tom to this latest set of interactions and shared screen shots…as Tom proves himself a complete ninny, poor dear. As I’m also a major Lestrade cheerleader, I’m hoping they have something good for him, after all this. If it’s Molly, I hope they do it up brown. If it’s not—he’d make a lovely Own Goldfish for Mycroft, whether it’s platonic John role or otherwise. But I’d like to see him pulled back from the edge of being the comic relief again: his role so far this season has been a bit too close to “Sherlock’s Idiot Clown at the Met,” when I’d so enjoyed having the Mofftiss saying that they saw Lestrade as capable and competent. I want capable and competent back a bit. Not that I mind it taking months to pin the bankrobbers, so much—but finding the Jack the Ripper thing “so promising”? No. Please. Bring back a Lestrade who can see a blazing set-up like that without having to call in Sherlock Holmes.

They also seem to be setting poor Lestrade up as another Lonely Odd Man Out...which I actually like, if they use it well later. The man fool enough to be loyal to Sherlock when Sherlock still can't be bothered to remember his name or consider his professional commitments. The man drinking alone at the wedding reception. The one person who greeted Sherlock with pure, simple, open love--and who's adrift. If they use that, either as a parallel mirroring track to Mycroft or as a connected element of Mycroft's own path, it will be good theater indeed. And a pleasure for all us Lestrade fans.

I do like what they’re doing with Molly, and expect to see it continue. She’s growing spine, she’s stretching, and she’s holding her own against Sherlock without giving up her muddled Female Charlie Brown elements. This is a good thing…and it brings out the ways that Sherlock always dangles the potential to value her as she deserves. He never quite does, and I suspect he never quite will. But she’s becoming a very nice female avatar of John-ishness.

Some entirely secondary sorts of comments: this team of writers is proving extremely skilled at what one might call the “distributed” plot. One of the best recognized and understood examples of that genre in Sherlock is “Scandal in Belgravia,” where all sorts of things that originally appear entirely unattached to the central plot prove to be critical elements: all those cases Sherlock turns down, all those details that look like mere throw-away, like Mycroft giving orders over his cell phone. They’re really good at showing you what looks like a muddled mess that keeps running off the rails, only to give a final twitch and pull it all together in the end.

This sort of thing works really well for structure freaks like me, especially structure freaks who have faith in them and like trying to second guess the pattern. I have to say, I’ve *enjoyed* both “The Empty Hearse” and “The Sign of Three” for that element of apparent muddle resolving into a unified whole. But I will also say it requires faith, and it requires an audience that’s not determined to get a clear, recognizable dramatic through-line early on. I’m caught between wanting to scold folks who say that there’s no strong mystery plot in either of these two eps, and wanting to congratulate them for their perception. On the one hand, there is a strong plot—strong for people who like seeing the story slowly come into focus. But if you want focus from the beginning, the two first episodes of the series suck—and to some extend IMO the season as a whole sucks. Not for me: as you can see, I’m transfixed. I adore this game. But I also know it’s not the only game in town, and if you like your stories to be crisp, clear, and in focus from the beginning, Moffat, Gatiss and Thompson haven’t delivered yet.

I am hoping they do so in “His Last Vow.” I do think this one needs a strong through-line, as it’s not going to have a strong resolution if my guesses are right. So they need to at least pick up the velocity and develop a head of steam before they go hurtling into the void between series end and new series start. It’s time for hitting one out of the ball park in terms of structure and energy. Let’s see if they do.

[Editorial addition, again--this time running around makign Kermit Arms and squealing: Ok. "His last vow." Sherlock promises to be there to protect John and his family. Please, fellow structure freaks, tell me I'm not a complete idiot to think this is a vow he can make, becuase he's had it made *to* him? By Big Brother, Only Companion, Pirate Enabler, He-Who-Worries-About-Danger-Nights Mycroft? And if so--if I'm right--then the Magnussen showdown pits Sherlock's vow to protect John against Mycroft's vow to protect Sherlock....  Yes. This is a structure freak thing. It's the sort of thing that just sets off all sorts of little symetries and parallel motive tangles and stuff that just makes me dance the crazy-happy dance. But.... Oh, I can't help but wonder. I really can't....]


End file.
